Living on the Road Full-Time for 17 Years with Marlene & Dan Lin

13:56Dan Lin:also like a lot of a lot of immigrants they came to the u.s to have a better life they came to u.s because of the opportunities like to think that you're gonna live in a car after your parents came to try to give you a better life was like something that didn't compute for them you know but one of the things i think that made our sort of life like this work without having a lot of conflict with our family is actually that we never really told them at the beginning that we're going to do this. And part of that is also because we never knew that we were going to do this for as long as we did. So there was nothing to tell, you know.

14:39Dan Lin:So when we did, we started sharing stuff on our blog, taking pictures and sending them to our family. They kind of learned about what we were doing as we were doing it. And then they realized, well, what they're doing is actually really cool. So we didn't give them a chance to kind of get scared about this, right? We were just going to Arizona. Oh, cool. Have fun. We're going to do a three months cross-country drive to Florida. Okay. Have fun. And after they saw how much fun and how cool this was and how much the kids were learning being on the road, they were actually very excited. So we never had that pushback from our family that was like, you shouldn't do this.

15:16Dan Lin:You should get jobs and do all that.

15:18Marlene Lin:I love that because I always tell people like the first step in pursuing a wild idea is to say it out loud and tell someone that it makes it real. But maybe the first step sometimes should be just doing the wild idea, not telling anybody and actually taking the step to do it. You don't have to tell other people, especially if they're going to shut you down.

15:35Dan Lin:Right. There are a lot of people who will tell you to not do something, you know. So and I think it does make it harder, It doesn't make it more challenging if you have a lot of those kinds of people in your life. But I think, you know, like a lot of things, showing is better than telling. But like I was saying before, like we thought we would be done after after Arizona initially, but we loved it. So we kept going. We thought we'd be done after Florida. We loved it. We kept going. And then we thought we'd actually be done five years into this life. We thought, OK, now our oldest is she has to go to school.

16:10Dan Lin:She has to go to kindergarten. So we actually thought that we would stop in 2012. And we went so far as to get a job. So I got a job where I wasn't freelancing anymore. And we went so far as like buying a house. So we had sold our house in Ventura after a few years, after we had our third kid, where we realized, okay, we don't need a house there anymore. but then we're like oh you came maybe maybe we should stop because we have to because we're not educators by by by training right we're just parents and we thought we don't know what we're doing we're going to screw our kids up so we decided that okay maybe we'll send them to normal school or you know traditional school and then we bought a house in the city where marlene grew up We parked Airstream outside.

16:56Dan Lin:We brought some of our stuff inside this empty house. That first night, we all slept in the same room, like with all these other spaces empty. And we're like, what are we doing?

17:08Marlene Lin:We continue to sleep in that same room.

17:10Dan Lin:This is not working. So we rented a house out and then we just kept going.

17:16Marlene Lin:And that's, we decided to give homeschooling a try. So Ava's in kindergarten. Somehow you saw an ad for like a charter school, which allows you to homeschool and they'll guide you. They'll hold your hand. You have a teacher. You check in with your teacher every 20 school days. Make sure you're on track. and like, okay, if somebody's holding her hand and it's a charter school, like we can do this, we can give it a try. Like it's kindergarten, you know, how hard can it be?

17:51Dan Lin:So it was because of that school that we enrolled her in that made us feel like we could do it. So after a couple of years of that, we're like, okay, now our middle kid needs to go to school. Let's do the same. Let's just keep going. So there's all these very like opportune moments that happen along the way that made us keep going. And any one of these situations could have been the end of our life on the road. But for whatever reason, it's not like we didn't make these decisions ourselves, like to give ourselves some credit. Like we did choose to keep going, but it's a lot of dedication. But there's also some luck along the way.

18:32Marlene Lin:The homeschooling program Dan and Marlene chose turned out to be a perfect fit for their kids. Perhaps the best part was that the curriculum included a lot of material about national parks. As the family traveled around the U.S., they visited those parks, learning about history, biology, geology, and politics. After a few years driving around the Americas, Din and Merlin dreamt of going farther afield, to Europe. In order to make van life feasible there, they bought a 4x4 Sprinter van. They spent about six months building it out themselves before shipping it overseas.

19:12Dan Lin:So, since 2018 until this year, we're all living in a 2017 Mercedes Sprinter van. It's four wheel drive, 170 wheelbase. And we bought it as a what's called a crew van, which means that just means that it has a second row of seats. That's factory. We wanted to do that because we wanted to make sure that it had like crash tested seatbelts and safety features and all that. So we built that out with sort of a galley in the middle. So sink and stove on one side, countertop. On the opposite side next to the sliding door is the fridge and some food storage. And in the back, we built bunk beds. So we have a bed on the top was a queen size bed.

20:01Dan Lin:And the bottom is a full size bed. And we made it so that they're not beds that convert. They're always ready. And we sleep on the bottom on a full size bed. It's 48 inches wide. And the kids sleep on the top. And it's a little over, I think it's 62 inches wide or something like that. You know, so this is when they first started living in that thing was seven years ago. So they were 11, 8, and 5, much smaller. So that space was a lot bigger then.

20:35Marlene Lin:Once again, we weren't planning to go more than a year or two in that van. You know, we were probably going to stop again.

20:42Dan Lin:Who knows? Yeah, so they all slept up there. So I kind of describe this as like, you know, like a frog in a pot of boiling water. Like, oh, no, we totally fit. But then like as they're living in it, they got bigger and bigger and bigger, taller, taller, taller. What's happening? And then by, you know, the beginning of this year as we're down in the bottom of Argentina, we're like, wow, you guys are all adult sized people pretty much. And I think this is the last few months that we can fit in this thing before something has to change. So there's no sort of other reference point of like, oh, I want to have a room where I can shut the door and just be in there by myself.

21:20Dan Lin:You know, so they're used to being next to their siblings, being next to their parents. If that questions, they can they can just ask. So they're super open with us. You know, they have any questions that we can kind of see if there's any things bothering them. So things don't kind of fester and simmer. So we kind of work stuff out right away. it's also made the kids really close you know which is actually kind of sad because our oldest is going to college in september and it'll be the first time that she's going to be gone from us for that long and we don't we don't quite know how we're going to deal with it we'll figure it out we know we're going to park outside her dorm she's gonna love that yeah she kind of does

22:04Marlene Lin:She actually asked us to stick around Santa Barbara and to figure it out together.

22:16Marlene Lin:While the van makes for pretty close quarters, Dan, Marlene, and their kids have figured out how to make it work. On a typical day, everyone needs to do some level of studying or computer time. So the family has carved out plenty of spots to set up a workstation. The mini fridge doubles as a standing desk, a bed is a perfect spot for Zoom calls, and there's almost always a picnic table outside. Flexibility is a key part of their lifestyle, and they've learned to adapt to each unique location. While they were in Europe, the family traveled to almost 40 countries. They anticipated being there for a year, maybe two, but ended up staying for much longer.

23:00Dan Lin:in europe it's really tough to try to find like 70 degree weather year round so in the winter time you have to go south you have to go pretty far south so one of the winters the second winter we were there and it was uh you know 2020 so i think maybe you know where this is going and we we go to we go to morocco so we go down to the bottom of spain we take the ferry across to morocco easy trip actually people do this every year morocco is kind of like europe's baja you know people go down there to go surf people go down there for the cuisine for the friendly you know locals and you know the cheap stuff and we were kind of like covet was starting to happen like as we're driving across from croatia over across to spain like europe gets their first case of covid in northern in Italy.

23:49And we're like, well, let's keep going.

23:51Dan Lin:Let's just kind of outrun this. But we crossed into Morocco and then we felt like, okay, now there's a body of water between us. So it's harder for this virus to come across. But we ended up getting stuck in Morocco when they closed the border about two months into our trip in Morocco. And we were down near the bottom, near the town of Agadir when they announced that there's no traveling on the highways. We literally hung out there for like two weeks. And then just like the day they announced that Spain was closing their borders from everyone in Morocco, like Europeans included, we're able to drive like all night up to the border.

24:35But unfortunately, we got there at 9pm, even though the border didn't close till

24:40Dan Lin:midnight they were already closed so we were we were stuck in morocco waiting for like a rescue ferry to come get all these 500 campers that were stuck there so the moroccans were amazing they had this parking lot that they were still building outside of the port of tangier and they moved all of us over there all 500 campers and overnight they brought in like a couple of containers that were portable buildings one was a little grocery store one was a little bakery they brought in electrical outlets they build electrical outlets all the way around the camper so we could all plug it and charge and they had water sewer system and they all they did all of

25:26Marlene Lin:this for all of us for free there was a fence around us and we couldn't leave without permission Yeah. So we were lucky because we were there and Marlene is dual citizen.

25:38Dan Lin:She has dual citizenship in Croatia with the kids, too. She was able to get it for the kids. And since I'm her spouse, I was able to get residency in the EU. So because of that, we were able to stay there and wait for the rescue ferry that would only take people that were EU citizens or residents. So even though we were stuck there for two weeks, eventually we did get out.

26:01Marlene Lin:So you spent the pandemic mostly in Spain?

26:04Dan Lin:We spent the pandemic mostly in Europe.

26:08Marlene Lin:In Croatia.

26:08Dan Lin:Yeah, when we got back to Europe on the rescue ferry, we drove from France all the way to Croatia. And then we spent basically the next year in Croatia in the stone house on the island where Marlene's dad grew up.

26:29Marlene Lin:After spending four years in Europe, Dan and Marlene decided to come back to the Americas and continue their adventures. They recently returned to the U.S. from a couple of years traveling on the Pan American Highway, driving all the way from California down to Argentina and Chile. Now they're back in California to support their oldest daughter as she starts her freshman year in college. Meanwhile, Dan and Marlene are building on a new truck camper for off-road adventures as they adjust to having four people on the road rather than five.

27:04Marlene Lin:Any advice on, you know, people traveling on the road, like in a van or truck? I think the biggest thing is that people should slow down.

27:15Dan Lin:people should spend more time in places that may not seem like there's anything to see but if you just dig a little deeper every place has something interesting about it when we travel with like our friends who are you know working traditional jobs living in a house and sometimes we'll be like hey let's you guys have a couple week vacation let's go do something and their thought is always well let's just drive two straight days to Wyoming so we can spend a week there and then drive two days back. It's like, why don't you guys just enjoy the road along the way? You know, you don't have to spend the majority of your vacation at that destination, right?

27:57Dan Lin:Because it really is what they say, like, you know, the journey is part of the adventure.

28:04Marlene Lin:What do you hope people know about this lifestyle that you lead? like for me like we're just like regular people we didn't have like these like crazy aspirations like right away like we're gonna go to Everest and we just like to hang out we don't have you know we're just a couple of chill dudes well I think it goes back to what we're saying at the

28:28Dan Lin:beginning that every time you get to a place, the next place seems a little easier. And if you just keep keeping that mentality, you get to the, cross the border into the next country, see what that's like. And once you get familiar with that area, you know what? The border on the other side isn't as scary as you once thought. And by that frame of mind, anybody from anywhere, as long as you can have, you know, sort of the means to kind of make it happen. You have the time, you have maybe the resources to be able to do it. We're lucky to be able to have that, have remote jobs. And I think a lot more people have that these days than there ever has been.

29:12Dan Lin:You can just get to the other side of the border and figure out how to cross it. And then you can, you do that enough times, eventually you'll go all the way around the world before you even know it. And that's essentially what happened to us.

29:24Marlene Lin:Yeah. And you don't have to be independently wealthy. To live on the road, we don't need nearly as much money as a typical family. We can survive off of a small income.

29:34Dan Lin:It's way more expensive to be in Southern California for us right now.

29:38Marlene Lin:Yeah, we don't have a mortgage. We don't have utility bills. Our mortgage is like our gas. And if we decide not to drive that week, we're not paying anything.

29:53Marlene Lin:Dan and Marlene actually recorded this interview and their latest 4x4 camper. To see a screenshot of their setup, you can check out the REI blog post for this episode. We'll link to it in the show notes. You can also see more about what they're up to on their Instagram at molly.mish. That's M-A-L-I dot M-I-S-H. You can also see photos of all of Dan and Marlene's camper vehicles over the years and stay up to date with them on their blog at mollymish.com. Once again, that's M-A-L-I-M-I-S-H. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Piers-Nitzberg of Puddle Creative.

30:42Marlene Lin:Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Motula and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.